My handiwork is drowning, and you recite song

My heart breaks for Gaza. I see the images and videos coming from there, and I hear my own heart cracking. After the total destruction Israel has wrought there, with most of the population now living in tents, the flood that has arrived now – when everything is submerged and there's nowhere to flee, when the scant food available gets soaked and ruined, when the cold strikes 24/7 against the drenched people – the misery is indescribable. And here, in the place that bears primary responsibility for this situation, hearts remain sealed to the horrific human suffering. And the heart aches for that too. Ori Goldberg gives words to the tragedy.

Ayala Shalev, Editor, That’s About Us

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My handiwork is drowning, and you recite song

Ori Goldberg

Israel is snuggling up to the coming storm. It doesn't matter at all whether it arrives. Children stay home (my son's school announced two days of remote learning), parents are late to work, the conversation turns into a good-natured argument between winter lovers and haters. Coats are being pulled out of closets, furniture is being tied down on balconies, potted plants are taken inside. For a moment it seems possible to forget "the situation", because, for a moment, it's not in our hands. The rain falls on "the liberals" and "the messianics" alike. The planes aren't bombing, the forces aren't raiding, the bulldozers aren't demolishing. True, in the Knesset, the accelerated legislation that is stripping away democracy also from Jews continues. Yet it still doesn't truly disturb anyone. Levin threatens Litzman, Kariv condemns Levin, Ben Gvir shows up with a hangman's pin, the legal advisor declares the draft law unconstitutional... No one is smashing any table, especially not in a storm. Let the young men play before us. We're feeling cozy under the blankets.

Right now, millions in Gaza are waiting to drown. Shimon Riklin smiles upon hearing the weather report from a meteorologist on a weather site. They both agree to discuss it after the storm's fury hits Gaza and to check exactly what it "cleared out there." The video circulates on social media. Bibi objectors are horrified by Bibi supporters, Bibi supporters mock Bibi objectors ("The days are over", whispers the Justice Minister threateningly; "You'll end up like the military prosecutor," an MK threatens the deputy legal advisor). Despite the "civil war" everyone promised us, everyone seems quite calm. And meanwhile, Israel has destroyed and is destroying all the infrastructure in Gaza. Israel is not allowing any equipment that could prepare for the storm – from tents to clothing and tools for digging drainage ditches – to enter Gaza. There is very little food and very little drinking water. After a month's worth of rain falls on the Strip in just a few hours, there will be even less of everything. Very few people care. Israeli society as a collective doesn't care at all.

This is the real situation. The consensus that sustained the genocide is only strengthening. Israeli society simply doesn't care. Precisely now, in the face of the Force majeure that is the rain, after Israelis decided that "the war is over," precisely now it's possible to imagine a situation where the Palestinians in Gaza (no one is talking about the land theft in the West Bank) will be seen for a moment in their human distress. They are about to drown. Even if Israel deliberately destroyed all the infrastructure, this is a disaster that cannot be blamed on "us." Even from a mere PR perspective, isn't a moment of compassion possible here? Extending a hand to an entirely human distress that would allow Israel to position itself within a continuum of humanity?

The answer is a resounding no. Israel and Israelis simply don't care. Smotrich and Ben Gvir don't care. Gaza doesn't interest them, and not because they want to kill everyone. Smotrich is busy managing the land theft in the West Bank. He's also turning the entire Central Command into a militia in service of the plunder. Ben Gvir isn't even interested in that. Ben Gvir distills the essence of this Israeli moment: the more "they" (he doesn't distinguish between Palestinian citizens of Israel and subjects in the occupied territories) are trampled and oppressed – and if they die, it's not so terrible – the better "we" live. It doesn't matter at all that Israel is incapable of doing anything in Gaza except destroying it. It doesn't matter that Israel is being gently rolled back from Lebanon and Syria. What matters is constantly intensifying the inequality. If he started by denying meals to "infiltrators" (most of whom were simply Palestinians unlucky enough to cross imaginary IDF lines), he has no choice but to ramp up the intensity until it reaches execution. Smotrich, envious of Ben Gvir's stability in the polls, hurries to declare that it applies to "internal traitors" too, and the center-left is horrified. "Fine if it happens to Palestinians, but to us? We killed more Gazans with our planes! We hate draft-dodging Haredim more than you do!" Immediately, everything turns inward, back to the game everyone enjoys playing, to the tools that never break. The opposite is true, if anything. The more Palestinian deaths are seen as necessary, as right, the rosier the cheeks of leftists and right-wingers alike. After all, Palestinian lives and deaths are just props (at best) in a production staged by Jews in Israel for their own amusement.

No one cares. If they die, we live. If they are oppressed, we thrive. Throughout the entire war between "liberals" and "messianics," no one on either side paused for a moment to propose increased aid to Palestinians in Gaza, even for three days. They exist only as numerical data (when checking how many were already sick before starving to death) or as terrorists ("There are no innocents in Gaza"). If they are human beings, then we are not. Israel is nothing but the negation of a negation. Look for us. We're feeling cozy under the blankets.

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Ori Goldberg is an academic specializing in the relationship between religion and politics in the Middle East. Today, he is an independent commentator who regularly appears in global media.